Ethiopian Rebels Tighten Grip

Peace Talks Key To Africa Nation`s Fate

May 27, 1991|By Howard Witt, Chicago Tribune.

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — Anti-government rebels closing in on Ethiopia`s capital claimed to have captured the city`s international airport Sunday night, apparently pressing home their military advantage only hours before peace talks were scheduled to begin in London.

In a clandestine radio broadcast, the Ethiopian People`s Revolutionary Democratic Front said it had taken the airport less then 4 miles from downtown, and warned all civilians and military flights not to attempt to land there.

The rebel claim could not immediately be verified because an all-night curfew restricts movement in Addis Ababa`s streets. Hours earlier, rebels captured the government`s largest military airbase at Debre Zeit, 35 miles southeast of the capital.

On Monday, the United States will try to broker a peace agreement for the fractured country in a major test of a new post-Cold War foreign policy that aims to foster contact with all sides in African civil wars in order to help resolve them.

The three major parties to Ethiopia`s complex and longstanding conflict, the remnants of the brutal Marxist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, separatist rebels from the northern province of Eritrea and rebels from the north-central province of Tigre, are scheduled to sit down together at the American Embassy in London to thrash out a peaceful ending to two separate civil wars that have thoroughly wrecked the country.

But if the peace talks fail, an invasion of the ancient capital, Addis Ababa, looks virtually certain. The Revolutionary Democratic Front, which is dominated by the Tigreans, has encircled the city, and there are scarcely any government troops left to stop it from walking right in.

The demoralized army`s disintegration accelerated Sunday as the front`s forces took the military airbase at Debre Zeit. Several dozen government tanks headed south through downtown Addis Ababa in apparent response, occasionally crashing into one another as they made their way through the streets.

Meanwhile, several thousand government troops were reported to have fled into neighboring Djibouti from the Red Sea port of Aseb, captured by Eritrean forces Saturday.

At Ethiopian Orthodox churches across the capital Sunday, worshippers gathered to pray for peace-and anything that would keep the rebels from entering the city and triggering what many fear could become a massacre. Some said they hoped the U.S. would intervene by sending in Marines.

``We are wishing that America will help us,`` said Germa Wolde Mariam, 30, a civil servant, as he stood outside the 96-year-old St. George`s Church. ``There are many old grudges here. If the woyane (bandits) come here, maybe they will start shooting. There will be many problems.``

Germa`s wish that the U.S. would help solve Ethiopia`s problems was not entirely in vain, although American military intervention would appear completely out of the question. For months, American ambassadors in the region have been actively cultivating contacts with representatives from both Ethiopian rebel groups as well as the government, in the hope of having some influence in whatever government eventually takes power.

The head of the Revolutionary Democratic Front`s foreign relations department, Seyoum Musse, for example, has met frequently in Khartoum with James Cheek, the U.S. ambassador to Sudan. Two months ago, American diplomats practically dictated a rebel announcement that they would not harm foreigners in Addis Ababa.

Meanwhile the Bush administration wielded enough influence with the remnants of Mengistu`s government to persuade it to allow Israel to mount a weekend airlift to rescue more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews from the capital. Mengistu himself fled the country last Tuesday for Zimbabwe.

Diplomats say the active American engagement reflects a new Bush administration policy to try to become an honest broker in foreign conflicts where the U.S. has no direct strategic interests.

It is a marked shift from the Cold War, when the U.S. took sides in a number of African conflicts and propped up a parade of unsavory dictators largely to counter the Soviet Union.

Part of the keen American interest in Ethiopia arises from the country`s persistent famines, caused as much by Mengistu`s disastrous agricultural collectivization policies as devastating natural droughts. American relief agencies have longstanding involvements in Ethiopia, a fact that has raised the country`s profile in the U.S.

And there also is an expressed Western optimism about this country that is sorely lacking when diplomats run down the list of the many other troubled states on the continent. The Ethiopians, diplomats commonly note, have a rich, centuries-old culture and national identity that has managed to survive generations of feudalism, colonialism and finally Marxism.

But whatever can keep Ethiopia`s factions from butchering one another now is an open question.